So, yes, this has been a hard week, and last night was particularly hard, since we spent 11:30 - 2 a.m. in our local hospital's A&E (a.k.a., the ER). Thank goodness, MrD is much, much better now (it was a frightening but temporary problem, fully solved by medicine, thank goodness), but we're all pretty tired now...but I could not possibly wait to share the piece of good news that was made public today in the UK, seriously brightening my day and week!

Ever since I moved to the UK, I've loved Booktrust, an independent reading and writing charity that gives free books to young children in the UK. As someone who cares passionately about child literacy, and about ALL children getting access to books of their own, I think it's not only a great organization but also an essential one.

Now they've created a new bookgifting program for older children called BookBuzz. It's designed to get good books into the hands of Year 7 children in the UK. Here's an extract from the press release that came out today:

A new reading programme from Booktrust will roll-out this September to secondary schools across the country. Bookbuzz offers secondary schools the chance to give their Year 7 pupils the choice of a book from a specially selected list of 17 titles that include fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Bookbuzz aims to support independent reading for pleasure as children make the sometimes difficult transition from primary to secondary education as well as encouraging a whole school reading culture.

The programme, which - thanks to generous support from participating publishers - costs just £2.50 per pupil, is designed so that there is a book that will appeal to every child, whatever their ability or interests, crucially chosen by the pupil and supported by the Bookbuzz schools pack. The element of choice in Bookbuzz is key to its success: in a survey of Year 7 pupils 71% stated that the fact they had chosen a book themselves made them more likely to read it.

Professor Guy Merchant, Professor of Literacy in Education at Sheffield Hallam University comments: "Bookbuzz will play a key role in a school's policy drive to improve the student reading experience. Giving them the chance to choose and keep a book can be a unique and empowering experience, offering reluctant readers the encouragement they need to begin to enjoy reading. Bookbuzz will also give students a positive introduction to their school library early in their transition to secondary education, the beneficial effects of which cannot be underestimated. The enhancement of the programme with a whole school reading kit is important; where a strong school reading culture is established, this combination of aspiration and support can have a significant impact on students' life chances."

An independent expert panel selected the Bookbuzz titles from a wide range of books submitted by publishers for consideration, whittling it down to 17 quality titles from 10 different publishers that offer a breadth of genre and reading level. The inaugural Bookbuzz list includes a former Blue Peter Book of the Year winner, a collection of short stories about real-life heroes and a book about child exploitation in the Dubai world of camel racing from a former Carnegie shortlisted author...

And guess what's one of the books on the list? A Most Improper Magick!!!!!!!

I am so, so happy about this.

Every participating school will be given two sample sets of all 17 books chosen, one set for the Year 7 classroom for the students to make their choices of which books to order for themselves, and one set for the staffroom, so that the teachers can read the books too. Booktrust is also supplying them with "free downloadable resources to encourage classroom activity around the Bookbuzz books and an online video which teachers can stream in class to help aid pupil book choice".

You can see the full list of BookBuzz books and find out more about the program, find out more about the books that have been chosen, find out how to register your school for the program if it hasn't registered already, and check out the adorable e-cards that BookTrust designed for A Most Improper Magick!

I love, love, love the whole concept of this BookBuzz program, and I am so thrilled, grateful and genuinely honored that A Most Improper Magick has been chosen for it.

Yesterday I got an email from my wonderful UK publishers, asking if I'd be willing to take the train to Bath sometime in the next couple of months so that Booktrust could take a video of me there, talking about Kat and my books. Um...YESYESYESYESYESplease?????

In a week that has been full of parental worry and deadline panic and sheer exhaustion...that was a pretty amazing email to get. (Even if my first thought was: Whoa, I'll have to actually get a haircut and find some non-stained clothes to wear! ;p )

And this has been really amazing news.

*Warning: Very Whiny Post ahead! Read on at your own peril...*

Oh, agh. There's so much I'd been planning to talk about the next time I posted here. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm weekend. MrD and I went on an epic, Winnie-the-Pooh-style Expotition in search of the elusive and possibly ghostly ice cream van. (We can hear it all the time, but we can never find it - and neither can anyone else in our neighborhood! It's almost like an urban myth - except that five times a day in warm weather, we all hear the tinkling music floating through the streets...)

I've been reading fascinating 30s history as WIP research. I'm at the stage where I'm so caught up by my WIP, all I want is to write it all the time...

...but honestly, here's the real news, now that I'm sitting here to post.

Yesterday, I got started on the freelance edits (for a 30,000-word project) that are due in two weeks. This morning, I was emailed a thick and thoughtful set of UK copyedits and line edits for A Reckless Magick, which are due in one week. Less than half an hour after I'd gotten started on them, thinking, Okay, a week should be just about exactly enough if I use all my writing time for the next week on this...

...I got a phone call from MrD's school. He is horribly, miserably sick again, with the Ear Infection That Will Not Die. He's at the doctors' office now. I expect he'll be at home for at least another couple of days, and possibly more. He is so physically miserable, it's wrenching to witness.

My deadlines are feeling so scary right now, I feel sick every time I think about them, or about my WIP. (I'm okay in terms of my bursary contract, because I used 100% of my writing time in the last two weeks on my WIP, so I can afford to lose a week on it now...but oh, I didn't want to lose that week.)

I usually try to post here at least two or three times a week, but I may be scarce for the next week or so. I hope you guys all understand.

Right now, I'm listening to sugar-sweet Croatian pop music (don't even ask! for some reason, it feels comforting right now) and feeling like the Whiny Queen of Melodrama. In twenty minutes, it'll be time to go back to being Competent Mom.

Competent Mom is the perfect nurse. Competent Mom is ever-calm. Competent Mom has no worries.

Competent Mom certainly doesn't secretly feel like this inside:



(Many thanks to Tessa Gratton for that link!)

Please send virtual chocolate and romance novels (the lighter and fluffier the better)?????

I've really loved reading Nova Ren Suma's Turning Points blog series, where lots of different authors have talked about their biggest personal and professional turning points. Today it's my turn - and you can win a signed hardcover of Renegade Magic just by commenting on my Turning Points blog entry.

Here's a quick snippet:

...I just planned to do it all: work the day job during the day, write my fiction at lunchtime, and write my PhD thesis at night. I could finish the thesis within a year, and have that PhD diploma to make me officially a success. Easy-peasy!

Well. Guess how long that plan worked out?

I think it was on the second night of my new schedule that I started crying helplessly when I sat down at my computer, completely overwhelmed. That was when I realized that I’d made a fatal error...

You can read my full blog entry here. I'd love to read comments either there or here! (Although of course if you want to enter the giveaway, you should make sure to post your comment there!)

I was feeling really proud of myself this afternoon for everything I'd managed to do today. Not only had I written 631 words of my WIP this morning (hooray!) while MrD (who is all better, triple hooray!) was at preschool, but when I found out that something had gone wrong with our monthly credit card payment, I'd also hopped on a bus into town with MrD to fix things at the bank. Now we were finally back home with a lovely stack of library books as a nice bonus, and yet, with superheroine-style impressiveness, here I was getting even more done by cooking refried beans and hot chocolate...

...and at exactly that point, I looked down and realized that I had just finished adding the necessary tablespoons of olive oil NOT into the pot of boiling pinto beans, as I'd intended, but into the saucepan full of milk for hot chocolate.

Oops.

And, er...maybe a sign that I need to STOP trying to get any more things done this afternoon! Or at least, I should have a little rest first.

But here are the links I've been holding open on my tabs for a while now so that I could share them here:

• Tansy Rayner Roberts's guest post on Kate Elliott's blog, Looking for the Women (in Ancient Rome), is an absolutely fascinating look at the different roles women played in ancient Rome, and it's really entertainingly written, which makes it even more fun to read. I cheered as I read - and I immediately started hankering to read some really good historical fiction set in Rome!


• Sarvenaz Tash's Hey Jealousy is a great blog entry about coping with the kind of jealousy that's just unavoidable in life (and certainly as an author). I love her honesty and her approach to dealing with it.


• And I really love the latest two ebook covers designed by Patrick, one for an SF story collection by Aliette de Bodard, and one for a YA novel reprint by Stephanie Hale.
  
  Patrick wrote a really interesting entry about the process behind both cover designs on his blog, and it's definitely worth reading if you're interested in ebooks or cover design!

Now I'm closing my tabs - whew! - and I'm going to take an hour just to curl up with my new library finds. Mmm, reading bliss!

Over at the Smack Dab in the Middle author blog, I just posted a really personal blog entry on this month's theme, Parents. Mine is called "Parenting and Writing" and it begins:

Parenting is one of those issues in life that suddenly takes on completely different angles when you start doing it yourself. It was a shock, when I had my baby, to find myself suddenly a "mom", expected to be ever-nurturing, ever-compassionate, ever-strong. When you have a child, you stop being just a person - in a lot of ways, socially, you also become a construct: The Mom (or: The Dad, which has its own intimidating set of cultural ideals).

When I studied American Women's History in college, I remember my professor, with a wry quirk to her mouth, writing the phrase: "It's all Mom's fault" on the chalkboard, as she discussed the rise of that psychological approach. There can be a real sense of betrayal for a child (even a grown-up child) whenever we see a mother who has done something that isn't objectively right (or in other words, the way moms are supposed to behave).

I think the years of MG fiction are the years when many kids first start really noticing the ways their moms are failing to live up to that cultural standard. I know that my friends and I were vocal in those years whenever we noticed our moms' failures.

Well. Now I'm a mom, and guess what? I fail to live up to that cultural standard every. single. DAY...

You can read the full blog entry, and I'd love to read any comments, either there or here.

(I'm also really hoping that this is not TOO personal a blog entry...MrD is still sick, and I'm so tired, it's a little hard to judge stuff like that today!)

Last Monday I talked about how much I adore Sorcery and Cecilia; or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, and I posted a link to the first letter in the book, from Cecy in the country to Kate in Regency-era London (written by Patricia Wrede as the start to a letter game). As the second part of the Enchanted Chocolate Pot blog tour, here's the letter that Kate (a.k.a., Caroline Stevermer!) sent in reply.

Oh, do I love this book! Just re-reading this letter made me happy.

And all three books in the trilogy - Sorcery and Cecilia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician - will be available as ebooks on May 22nd. Hooray!

Now here's Kate's letter:

10 April 1817
11 Berkeley Square

Dear Cecy,

If you've been forced to listen to Reverend Fitzwilliam on the subject of the emptiness of worldly pleasures for hours together, I feel I ought to write something bracing to cheer you up. (As for the Vanities of Society, it would take a confirmed cricketer to fully understand them -- and I trust once the weather turns fair our good reverend will spend his afternoons out on the pitch where he longs to be instead of indoors boring the earrings off harmless young ladies.) But after three days of a London Season I find it hard to come to the defense of frivolity with any spirit. Perhaps it will make Rushton seem more amusing to you if I complain vigorously. (Don't worry, I haven't said a word to anyone else, not even Georgina.)

First, there was our arrival in Berkeley Square, a very welcome event after a day spent in the coach with Aunt Charlotte complaining of her migraine and Georgina exclaiming, "Only look, a sedan chair!" at every opportunity. It was very late and we were very tired and soiled with our travels, too weary to feel the proper emotions on entering such a grand house for the first time. (Horace Walpole is by no means Aunt Charlotte's favorite author, but the opportunity to hire his London town house for the Season has given her a new appreciation for him and his works.)

Make no mistake, it is very grand. On the outside it is a high, narrow, polite looking house built of brick. On the inside there is a high-ceilinged entrance hall with a marble staircase winding up two flights. On either side of the hall are reception rooms. The one on the right is called the blue saloon. It is very comfortable with a bow window overlooking the Square. On the left side of the hall is the drawing room, much grander than the blue saloon, furnished with lyre-back chairs, delicate sofas and a spinet. There are velvet drapes in the windows and a highly polished marble floor, upon which I slipped and sat down hard as we were being shown about the house. This was my first piece of clumsiness in London, but I suspect it will not be my last. The general effect of the marble floor and ivory drapes is almost arctic. Only touches of primrose and black relieve the whiteness. At the top of the two flights of stairs are the bedrooms. Georgina's looks out over the Square and mine faces back into the lane behind the house. If I crane my neck I can see down into the kitchen garden -- but there is nothing much to look at. Nothing to compare with the gardens at Rushton.

It seemed like a dream to me, following Georgina up and up the stairs -- she like a kind of angel climbing to her proper place, her golden hair bright in the light from the lamps -- me like a ramshackle shadow lurking after her, shedding hairpins and stumbling over the hem of my skirts.

The bedrooms are lovely, but that night they seemed grand and cold and I was a little dismayed to find myself in my own room all alone -- can you credit it, after I schemed for years to get a room to myself? So I slipped in to Georgina to say good night and get my top buttons undone. Georgina was sitting at her window, trying to guess from the darkened glass what direction she was facing so she could say her prayers toward home. I turned her around and didn't tease her, even when I saw the lock of hair she had clenched in her moist little palm -- Oliver's, tied up in a bit of pink ribbon. Can you believe it?

Well, as I say, I got her pointed in the right direction and she got me unbuttoned and told me that I had a smut rubbed clear across my forehead and a spot coming on my chin. (As if I hadn't been driven half mad feeling it coming out all day long in the coach . . .) So we parted, she to her prayers and I to my bed, the highest, hardest, narrowest, dampest bed on four lion's paws (London would be grander still if they knew how to air their sheets.)

Our first day in London was spent shopping, which means I kicked my heels while Aunt Charlotte and the modiste went into raptures over Georgina. The second day we were taken to see the Elgin Marbles, which was interesting, and to listen to other people see the Elgin Marbles, which would make the eyes roll right back in your head with boredom. The third day we went back to shopping and I was able to get gloves. Please find enclosed a pair which I think will suit your pomona-green crape to perfection. I bought a pair for myself and have spilt coffee on them already. So you see London hasn't changed me yet.

I feel quite envious about Lady Tarleton's dance. Aunt Charlotte has spoken of Almack's but never yet without looking at me and giving a little shudder of apprehension. She intends to call on Lady Jersey tomorrow. If their acquaintance has been exaggerated (and you know that sometimes people do not care quite as much for Aunt Charlotte as she thinks they do) I don't know how we will obtain vouchers. It is plain, however, that without vouchers for Almack's Assembly, Georgy will never truly shine in society, no matter how lovely she is. For my own sake, I hope I get to go too. It would be a shame to have trodden Robert Penwood's feet black and blue learning to dance and then never to get a chance to put it to the test.

Do you think a wizard's installation would be a lady-like thing to attend? We passed the Royal College on the way to the Museum and I'm sure I could find my way.

Do tell me all about the dance and mention Oliver a little so Georgina doesn't sigh herself away entirely.

Love,
Kate

My short story "Dancing in the Dark" was published today at Daily Science Fiction, where it's free to read online.

I should say, as a note for Kat readers and parents, that this is a story written for adults, so although the narrator is a child, it's not MG fiction, and it does include strong language.

Although every detail and character in this story is fictional, it is one of the most personal stories I've ever written. (I talked about that a bit last week, when the story was first sent out to Daily SF subscribers.) It means a lot to me to see it published now.

Here's a quick snippet from the beginning:

I have three uncles, but one of them is dead.

He's the funny one....

You can read the full story here. If you have the chance to read it, I hope you'll like it.

I'll be turning thirty-five at the end of this month, and in a nice piece of serendipity, I've seen various online friends posting about their own 35th birthdays lately. 35 is one of those numbers that feels irrationally like a milestone, though, and it doesn't help that - since this is M.E. Awareness week - I've read far too many articles this week about how M.E./CFS "ruins" lives. Ouch.

(Note: I actually think it's great that those articles are being written! It's really important that people are talking publicly about the severity of the illness and the problems it causes, because it needs a ton more social awareness and medical research funding. As someone with exactly the degree of M.E. that's often used as an example in these articles, though, I'm not personally enjoying the whole pity angle at all, and the term "ruined" sets my teeth on edge, with all the value judgments it involves. In fact, I actually typed up a whole rant about that this morning - but then deleted it without posting, because: no. Politically, we need those articles, leaning hard on the pity angle, to raise awareness and research funding. I just have to be smart and stop reading them myself.)

The truth is, this has been a bad week in some ways, mostly due to the ME/CFS...but overall, I'm looking forward to being 35, and I'm enjoying my life, regardless of the (yes, serious and life-altering) limitations that the M.E. has brought about. It may have taken away the lifestyle that I'd expected to have, but I'm making a life now that includes a lot of happiness and has its own value, no matter what the physical/financial limitations I have to deal with. And any week that also includes fun new words on my WIP, delicious lattes in the beautiful mug MrD gave me for (UK) Mother's Day, and a trip out to see The Avengers (which was great!)...well, that can't really be a bad week, can it?

So here is a list of things that make me happy right now:

• Getting a cool new research book (the diary of a Youngstown lawyer in the Great Depression) for my WIP;


• Reading emails from friends;


• Re-reading a favorite book (I just finished re-reading Susanna Kearsley's The Shadowy Horses, a lovely Gothic-y novel for adults set in a Scottish archeological dig, with romance and ghosts and tons of Roman history);


• Looking forward to my birthday;


• Eating pear tart;


• Playing Octonauts games with my son;


• Wearing a gorgeous shawl bought for me in Beijing by a relative as a surprise gift;


• Watching very silly episodes of Horrible Histories.

Here is the shawl, as pictorial evidence:



And here is my favorite Horrible Histories sketch of the fourth season so far, The Apprentice...done with pirates!



What about you guys? What would be on your happiness lists today?

This is definitely my week for talking about books I love, because not one but two really wonderful MG fantasy novels come out today in America: Caitlen Rubino-Bradway's Ordinary Magic (the start of a fabulous new series) AND Ysabeau Wilce's Flora's Fury (the final book in an amazing trilogy)!



As you may remember, I raved about Ordinary Magic here when I first read it a few months ago. Love, love, love! It's the first book in my very favorite new MG fantasy series, and I can't wait to see where the rest of the series goes!

Ysabeau Wilce's Flora's Fury, on the other hand, is the final volume that completes another favorite series, one of the very best I've read. When I read her first book, Flora Segunda, back in 2007, when I'd just finished drafting Kat, Incorrigible, I thought: YES. This IS absolutely the field I want to be in! I loved Flora's fabulous voice, the magic, the style, and most of all the sheer fun of it all.

I read Flora's Dare a few years later, this time as one of the jury members for SFWA's Andre Norton Award. I was blown away - it was even better, stronger, and even more impressive than Book One had been. It had all the joyous fun and verve of Flora Segunda, but allied with wonderfully intense emotions and a plot that I thought was even tighter and more organic than the first had been. Flora's Dare won the Andre Norton Award that year, and I was one of the many people who voted for it.

I read Flora's Fury in completely different circumstances. By then, not only were Ysabeau and I friends, but we had both just had our first babies, only weeks apart from each other - and we both had third books to write for our trilogies, with deadlines that needed to be met. We were both figuring out at the same time how to be moms and how to be writers at the same time as being moms - not always an easy task. We were also figuring out at the very same time exactly how to write a final book in a trilogy.

I was really, really lucky, because I got to beta-read Flora's Fury as Ysabeau wrote it, and it was AWESOME. Even in the first draft, it was already so great - full of emotion and wild adventures and fantastic characters and relationships. It has so much wonderful payoff for everything that happened in the first two books, in every way. Pirates! Betrayals! Action! Romance! And the big emotional confrontations that I'd been waiting for on tenterhooks ever since the end of Flora's Dare!



You can read my full review on Goodreads, but the short version is: I loved it. Not only was it everything I was hoping for as a Flora fan, it inspired me in every way as a writer.

Flora's Fury is the perfect final book for a really spectacular series. Ordinary Magic is a perfect start to another.

Happy book birthdays to Ysabeau and Caitlen, and to Flora and Abby! I can't wait for both books to find tons of readers in the world. Both heroines absolutely deserve it. :)

In the spring of 2006, I was two chapters into writing my first Regency fantasy novel for kids, and it struck me - hadn't I heard of another Regency fantasy series, a YA one? I was pretty sure I remembered reading a glowing review in Locus for Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede's Sorcery and Cecilia: or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot.

So I ordered it, just to make sure I didn't repeat anything that had already been done...

...and I fell in love. Headlong, hopeless love with the humor, the magic, the setting, the romance, and most of all the voices of the two fabulous girls as they wrote back and forth to each other about their magical and romantic adventures. I loved everything about it, not as a fellow writer appreciating someone else's work but as a head-over-heels fangirl.

I read Sorcery and Cecilia three times in a row. I loved it THAT much! I gave it to Patrick, and he read it and loved it, too. I got the sequel, The Grand Tour, which I thought was even better. I scored an ARC of the third book at the Bristol branch of Forbidden Planet, and I read it with mingled delight and despair, because I couldn't believe that the series was ending.

I'd bought the first book because it seemed like a professionally smart thing to do. I bought the others because this turned out to be one of my favorite series EVER.

So I was thrilled when I got an email from the publicist at Open Road Media, asking if I'd like to take part in the blog tour for the new ebook edition of Sorcery and Cecilia, which will be published electronically on May 22nd.



The book began as a letter game between two writers who were friends and wanted to play a writing game for fun. There were no rules of the game, except that each writer had to remain in character for ALL letters, and neither of them was allowed to reveal where they hoped to see the story go. So when Patricia Wrede wrote the first letter, as Cecy, she was making everything up without any pre-planning conversation, and she had no idea how Caroline Stevermer would respond, as Kate.

The first letter, in its original version, begins, "My dearest cousin..."

...and you can read the full letter and/or download it as a PDF here, along with the edited version that appeared in the final book. (ETA: This link has changed and now leads to the final, edited version of the letter that appeared in the book.)

The three books in this trilogy sit in pride of place on the top shelf of my "best" bookcase (because yes I am a reading geek, and I have a bookcase just for my very favorite books). I have read them again and again, and I've loved every one of them, every time. They're delicious, like truly enchanted chocolate.

And I'm already wondering whether I could justify buying e-book editions too, just so I'd always have them on hand for comfort, even when I'm out of the house...hmm...